The majority of our work lately has been interstate topo. We run two or
three crews per day at each site. Naturally, each crew must begin their
point numbering several thousand numbers apart. This leaves gaps in the
point numbers between what each crew has located. The magnitude of the gaps
is even greater when we use GPS for topo because the GPS data collection
handles large numbers far better than TDS (HP48). We do not and will not
renumber the points because they are referenced in the field notes by point
numbers. When we submit the data to our client and ODOT, we need to submit
everything including rawfiles and field notes and we need everything to
coincide.
Given that situation, doing anything with the coordinate files is a very
long process. Our most recent job has +/-12,000 points. The point numbers
range from 1 to 36,000 +/-. Using the "Edit Points" command to edit point
descriptions to include attributes for Microstation/Geopak ASCII export
takes over an hour to process. Listing points takes quite a bit of time as
well. We try to catch all of the mistakes prior to reducing the rawfiles
but that cannot always be done.
The computer I am using is an HP N5350 laptop with an 850 mhz Pentium III,
384 MB ram running Windows 2000 Service Pack 1, AutoCAD Map 2000 and
SurvCADD CES (2001\06\21). We uninstalled W2k SP2 because of an issue with
Trimble Geomatics Office, which has been resolved, and have not had time to
reinstall it.
Another person in our office that is doing the majority of the drafting work
is using a standard PC with around a 650 mhz AMD Athlon, 256 MB ram running
W2k SP1, AutoCAD 2000i and SurvCADD CES (unknown).
Is this a known problem that is being addressed or has been addressed in a
newer build? Please help because this is going to be a reoccuring problem
with our current and future workload.
Rob Cross
Technical Manager
Field Crew Coordinator
Preferred Surveying Company, Inc.
10172 International Boulevard
Cincinnati, Ohio 45246
Phone: (513) 942-9420 x.17
Fax: (513) 860-8220
Cell: (513) 543-2901
email: rcross@preferredworld.com